This week’s guest, Rabih Alameddine, is one of the greatest writers of our time. His novels, including the masterpiece, The Hawkawati, and the National Book Award nominee, An Unnecessary Womanare stories about storytelling, resistance, love, and art.

Rabih and I talk about how and why art is political (and when that fails), why writers write about writers, JM Coetzee fumbling sweetly over gayness, the anti-intellectualism of American writers vs the pretensions of European ones, the connection between the art we consume and the politics we have, the disconnect between Americans and literature. Rabih calls Milo “Yanni,” thinks over what AIDS did to gay politics and culture, and we both talk about disgusting people.